inXile Entertainment's Kickstarter campaign for The Bard's Tale IV is on its merry way! To the surprise of few, it's off to a strong start, with over $250,000 (out of a total $1.25M) gathered in just two hours. Here's the Kickstarter pitch video, in which Brian Fargo has yet another meeting with the increasingly pubescent Publisher Kid™, before going on a trip to the chilly Orkney Islands...

30 years ago, a small company by the name of Interplay produced a cRPG titled Tales of the Unknown I: The Bard’s Tale. This game was crafted at a time when the RPG genre was growing and being defined by an endless stream of innovative releases. In this period dominated by Wizardry and Ultima, The Bard’s Tale was an unexpected hit, putting Interplay on the map. Brian went on to produce many of the RPGs we still love to this day, including Wasteland, Baldur’s Gate, Fallout, Icewind Dale, Planescape: Torment, and many more. The Bard’s Tale was also one of the first members of the Computer Gaming World Hall of Fame, and The Bard’s Tale III was featured in the Smithsonian’s “The Art of Video Games” exhibit.

During our successful crowdfunding campaigns for Wasteland 2 and Torment: Tides of Numenera, our legions of generous backers stunned us with their outpouring of support, proving those games still had an audience that was willing to help make them happen.

As we began to look into our next project, we were flooded with requests from many of our supporters who wanted us to return to The Bard’s Tale universe. The dungeon crawl genre it represents has largely been forgotten by mainstream publishers. What better time than the 30th anniversary of the original for us to bring The Bard’s Tale back to life with a true dungeon crawling sequel, The Bard’s Tale IV!
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The full pitch has all the information you'd expect to find in an inXile Kickstarter. What it doesn't have, other than a couple of short videos, is the level of "graphics whoring" we might have been led to expect from last month's interviews. But the campaign is a long 38 days, so I'm sure we'll get to that stuff eventually. A $20 pledge will secure you a copy of The Bard's Tale IV ($27 once the Early Bird tier has run out). Those who pledge today will also receive a free copy of Wasteland 2, Witcher 1, or Witcher 2 at the campaign's conclusion. The game's estimated release date is October 2017, but we all know how much that's worth.